FFXIV Hardware Requirements

[Heatsink]

There's nothing DX10 in yet that I'm aware of(SSAO coming up in phase 2), but as of the last time I played the game was using multiple cores fairly well. When I checked, all cores were something like 15-30% load from what I can remember.

If you have a quad core, could you check it with process explorer? With XIV, the running threads are scheduled in a way that all cores appear to be loaded when looking at it with task manager.

[Ragnell]

I'm sad that my laptop can't run this well, I get a max of 15 fps and average 5 fps when in game, I would swear a geforce 320M 1gb woulda been enough

[Oreth]

Can someone post up the requirements? Didnt see it in the OP and couldnt be arsed going through 26 pages

[Gethsemane]

Well, I just watched this today and I might now wait until Spring of next year to build a new rig. AMD will basically be rolling out their APU then. CPU + GPU all on one chip. APU meaning Accelerated Processing Unit. It would probably amount to the power of the Phenom 965 Black and one/two ATI 5870 cards. I would imagine it's going to be expensive when it first comes out but I think I'll wait for it.

I'll link the press conference here: AMD Fusion Demo/Conference. The blonde lady basically explains their future goals/current AMD statistics. The guy after her talks about the Fusion in general. It's a pretty decent thing to watch if you're killing time. In theory this sounds great but we'll see how good it works. Finally a quad-core/six-core APU where all cores are being used instead of sitting idle? I can only hope D: I would imagine it would be better overall to have it all on one board close together and be more energy efficient to do so. I can only imagine the size of the fan however.

The demo is live streaming of Aliens vs Predators in DX11 at the show. It starts at 58:00 minutes into the video. Seems to be some video lag cause of the stream on my end but it's the first demo of the APU. And that quality graphics can be in a small netbook like he said all the way up to a workstation. Hope to see more stuff in the next coming months personally.

Another demo at 1:01:00 showing the APU running in a web browser, first is without, next is with. 1-3 FPS without and almost 60 FPS with.

Not an AMD fanboy really, always preferred it though since my first computer had AMD/ATI, if it had Intel/nVidia I'd probably be with them. Wonder how Intel is going to counter this new technology? Always fun watching them both duke it out technology wise.

[bluefan]

I'm sad that my laptop can't run this well, I get a max of 15 fps and average 5 fps when in game, I would swear a geforce 320M 1gb woulda been enough

The 320M really isn't all that good...it's integrated, no? Not much different from the 9600M, and that wasn't that great either last I checked.

Well, I just watched this today and I might now wait until Spring of next year to build a new rig. AMD will basically be rolling out their APU then. CPU + GPU all on one chip. APU meaning Accelerated Processing Unit. It would probably amount to the power of the Phenom 965 Black and one/two ATI 5870 cards. I would imagine it's going to be expensive when it first comes out but I think I'll wait for it.

I'll link the press conference here: AMD Fusion Demo/Conference. The blonde lady basically explains their future goals/current AMD statistics. The guy after her talks about the Fusion in general. It's a pretty decent thing to watch if you're killing time. In theory this sounds great but we'll see how good it works. Finally a quad-core/six-core APU where all cores are being used instead of sitting idle? I can only hope D: I would imagine it would be better overall to have it all on one board close together and be more energy efficient to do so. I can only imagine the size of the fan however.

I've been waiting for Fusion for a long time...5 years, and we're still being shoved just words by AMD. If it's not out by the time XIV rolls around, I'll have to go with something else. Or if it turns out to be crap

[Ragnell]

The 320M really isn't all that good...it's integrated, no? Not much different from the 9600M, and that wasn't that great either last I checked.




I've been waiting for Fusion for a long time...5 years, and we're still being shoved just words by AMD. If it's not out by the time XIV rolls around, I'll have to go with something else. Or if it turns out to be crap

No it's a dedicated card which is why I'm puzzled

[Hyan]

No it's a dedicated card which is why I'm puzzled

How's your processor?

[Fayne]

You guys think this would run FFXIV on medium-high setting?:

Intel Core i7 720QM processor
6 GB RAM & 500 GB hardisc
17,3” HD LED screen
nVidia Geforce GT230M graphicscard w/1 GB RAM
DVD burner
HDMI
e-Sata
Windows 7 Home Premium

I am thinking about buying this laptop, but I know nothing about that kind of stuff.

Help would be greatly appreciated

[Kalisa]

I'm sad that my laptop can't run this well, I get a max of 15 fps and average 5 fps when in game, I would swear a geforce 320M 1gb woulda been enough

Wait until they optimize their game. Alpha's going to be the worst stage of things for a damn good reason.

[Freelancer]

You guys think this would run FFXIV on medium-high setting?:

Intel Core i7 720QM processor
6 GB RAM & 500 GB hardisc
17,3” HD LED screen
nVidia Geforce GT230M graphicscard w/1 GB RAM
DVD burner
HDMI
e-Sata
Windows 7 Home Premium

I am thinking about buying this laptop, but I know nothing about that kind of stuff.

Help would be greatly appreciated

Try any modern game, if it can run it at medium it should be able to run FFXIV.

[bluefan]

No it's a dedicated card which is why I'm puzzled

Really?

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-...M.28701.0.html

Unless you confused the GT with just the M version.

[Zeh]

Freelancer, your upgrades make no sense. You're buying sli 470s when ati is dominating in the priceerformance war and performance in general, wasting hundreds on ssds when they don't really affect the gaming experience at all, etc. etc. I'm wondering, are you just throwing money or do you think that's a legitimate upgrade for you?

[Celeras]

Freelancer, your upgrades make no sense. You're buying sli 470s when ati is dominating in the priceerformance war and performance in general, wasting hundreds on ssds when they don't really affect the gaming experience at all, etc. etc. I'm wondering, are you just throwing money or do you think that's a legitimate upgrade for you?

470s in SLI are better than 5850s in crossfire when it comes to price performance, and a good deal faster overall. It's pretty close for the single cards(5850 probably has a slight edge, though its slower), but since SLI scales better than crossfire in general the 470s end up being faster than even 5870s in many of the trials.

Source, starting from the page 14 where the ATI comparisons begin: http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforc...-sli-review/14

Either way, his upgrades are fine. Even the SSD is a reasonable purchase in his case since he said he doesn't have one for his OS drive yet.

[Deadgye]

Source, starting from the page 14 where the ATI comparisons begin: http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforc...-sli-review/14

Do they say what drivers they're using for each side? I tried looking but couldn't find it.

[Freelancer]

Freelancer, your upgrades make no sense. You're buying sli 470s when ati is dominating in the priceerformance war and performance in general, wasting hundreds on ssds when they don't really affect the gaming experience at all, etc. etc. I'm wondering, are you just throwing money or do you think that's a legitimate upgrade for you?

Got my 470s for 310 a pop from a friend's store (currently 340-350$) and that's just 10$ over the 5850.(300-310$) and in SLI they're better than the 5850 so I can confidently say its 20$ well spent.

getting 2 40GB intel SSDs to raid later in July to replace my WD green for OS, its either that or 10,000rpm drives and those are pretty pricey for being barely better than regular 7,200rpm ones.

You're more than welcomed to correct me and perhaps suggest a better alternative.

[Cooleko]

getting 2 40GB intel SSDs to raid later in July to replace my WD green for OS, its either that or 10,000rpm drives and those are pretty pricey for being barely better than regular 7,200rpm ones.

Your logic puts you wanting to use 5400 rpm then? Ditch that 7200 pronto

I would greatly advocate anyone that doesn't want to spend for SSD put two 10,000 rpm in raid0/raid10 (that takes 4/6).

my current setup takes about 1.5 minutes on the file check for ffxi before downloads. (if that). My laptop in college [7.2k] took 30-45 minutes.

modern games (Crysis Warhead, Supreme Comander 2, Dragon Age: Origins) only take 5 minutes top to install

when you first make the upgrade and you're installing your oem windows 7 you will cry a little [3 minutes?], then every system boot [30 seconds?] / program install for the next 6 months will make you proud. unfortunately, you get used to it.

[Freelancer]

Your logic puts you wanting to use 5400 rpm then? Ditch that 7200 pronto

I would greatly advocate anyone that doesn't want to spend for SSD put two 10,000 rpm in raid0/raid10 (that takes 4/6).

my current setup takes about 1.5 minutes on the file check for ffxi before downloads. (if that). My laptop in college [7.2k] took 30-45 minutes.

modern games (Crysis Warhead, Supreme Comander 2, Dragon Age: Origins) only take 5 minutes top to install

when you first make the upgrade and you're installing your oem windows 7 you will cry a little [3 minutes?], then every system boot [30 seconds?] / program install for the next 6 months will make you proud. unfortunately, you get used to it.

Ignoring space and focusing on speed since I won't put anything on them but OS for now.

Western Digital 150 GB VelociRaptor SATA 10,000 RPM 16 MB Cache 149.99$
Raid0 would cost 299.99$ (cheapest one I could find)

Intel X25-V SSDSA2MP040G2R5 2.5" 40GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) 117.99$
Raid0 would cost 235.98$

Speed wise the SSDs devastate the HDDs and price wise its cheaper.
----

So yeah the 10,000rpm is a laughable overpriced upgrade to 7,200rpm ones compared to cheaper and faster SSDs for me since I'm after the speed.

Of course feel free to correct and point me toward better alternatives.

[Gulkeeva]

Like I mentioned before you could get.. a Momentus XT hardrive.

Its SSD+7200 rpm sata2, costs about as much as a normal HDD with the speed of a SSD (namely on programs you use the most)

Although if you got cash to burn you could always wait for the new OCZ SSD, a 120GB "Revodrive" at $450 read speed 540MB/s and write at 530MB, and 75,000 IOPS. (I really could use that kind of space... 2 games + win7 almost like 60GB or something close)

[Cooleko]

Ignoring space and focusing on speed since I won't put anything on them but OS for now.

Spoiler: show

I appologize for not wanting to do any work, but you can't reason like that! Ignoring key variables is not allowed D:

Basically you took two variables, Speed (A) and Size (B)
Increasing either A or B and keeping the other static is greater cost
Decreasing A or B and keeping the other static is less cost
Increase both for rapidly increasing cost
Decrease both for rapidly decreasing cost

You compared two products where you found a high value for A and B in the first product and compared it to a higher value for A and much lower value for B in the second product.

finding a 2TB 5400 and comparing with a 1TB 7200 and comparing with a 150GB 10000 and comparing with to a 40GB SSD will yield relatively close costs.

Spoiler: show

standard disclaimer here as one may want to go add a third and forth variable for brand association and quality respectively, dont make this mistake on your next visit to newegg [aka finding a HQ and comparing it to a LQ just to make an arguement ]

I of course was only stating that 10k rpm drives (raid0) are acceptable alternatives to SSD and gave you examples of the speed differences i experienced with my transition from 7.2k to 10k raid0. Replacing two 10k in raid 0 with two SSD in raid 0 will yield a noticeable speed boost as well (because ssd are faster...).
But do not say anything about cost worth the money without comparing HDs of equal size! You originally kept your statements generic and implied you wanted equal size because you were considering OS only.

Originally Posted by Freelancer
getting 2 40GB intel SSDs to raid later in July to replace my WD green for OS, its either that or 10,000rpm drives and those are pretty pricey for being barely better than regular 7,200rpm ones.

I am only defending 10k rpm HDs as they are not just "barely" better than 7.2k. I think you feel like im attacking you but i just piped in and pointed out that your consideration of 10k is fine and its not just a small improvement but one you will be satisfied with

If you want only speed then of course SSD is your best option. (there is little alternative, Gulk points to one such)

[darkblade77]

I've experienced first hand loading into new areas a drop in FPS and my HDD in full seek. It's laughable you think a HDD has zero, ZERO effect on in game performance. Other genres I can agree with you, but definitely not MMOs. Talking about ones that are not zone heavy like XI and Aion.

*Edit
There really is an easy way to test this. Zip/rar up a large file, or a buncha them, and start unpacking them while playing your game. Run around into different areas and see how it goes.

That's because you have an entirely different system process eating up resources usually used to play the game. If you're going to play games while multitasking with a program like WinRAR that involves heavy disc access, of course having a better hard drive is going to help that.

There are plenty of creative ways you can lag up or kill the FPS of an otherwise smooth program that has nothing to do with the components that affect how smooth it is normally supposed to run. My personal favorite is sending a print command via parallel port.